1. Technical Field
The invention relates generally to the field of solid waste management and is directed to a combination device useful as a component in devices used for deploying and taking up a reusable cover for the open face of a landfill. More specifically, the invention is directed to an improved tarpaulin and spindle combination designed to be light weight, easily movable by typical landfill heavy equipment, and suitable for providing alternate daily cover in an inexpensive manner.
2. Description of Prior Art
Pursuant to federal regulation, all sanitary landfills are required to have their working faces covered at the end of each day or when not being worked in order to control disease, fires, odors, blowing litter, and scavenging. The traditional daily cover used is soil, at a minimum required depth of six inches. However, the use of that amount of cover soil on a daily basis is expensive and takes up an unacceptable amount of valuable landfill air space, thereby reducing the capacity of a landfill and shortening its useful life. Given the high cost of siting, permitting, and constructing of landfills, the use of alternative daily cover instead of soil can be far more cost effective, saving time and operational costs including the cost of importing soil, equipment wear and tear, labor, and valuable airspace.
The prior art discloses various devices for deploying alternate daily cover. One such device is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,620,281 (Lammers). This device employs a superstructure to support a roll of thin film, which is unrolled over the open face of a landfill. The device is moved about by heavy equipment of the kind typically used at a landfill. However, this device suffers from the disadvantage of its reliance on the thin film material. Because of the light-weight nature of the thin film, ballast must be distributed over the surface of the thin film as it is deployed in order to hold it onto the face of the landfill, necessitating the Lammers device to employ hoppers. This feature adds significantly to the complexity and weight of the device. Moreover, the heavy equipment used to position the device is also used to provide power to the hoppers and must be modified somewhat to accommodate attachment to the device, resulting in downtime between use of the equipment with the device and for other purposes. Because of the reliance of the device on the use of light weight thin film, it cannot accommodate heavier, but far less expensive, alternative daily covers, such as reusable tarpaulins. Also, the increased weight of the device due to the need to employ hoppers makes the device impractical for use with landfills having unusually soft or wet content. These limitations of the Lammers device are overcome by the present invention.
Reusable tarpaulins are an effective, low-cost alternative daily cover, but can be difficult to deploy and take up because of their bulk and weight. The deployment process is labor intensive and dangerous if done by hand. Simply dragging a tarpaulin with a machine can be destructive to the tarpaulin. The prior art discloses devices for deploying and taking up tarpaulins, thereby permitting their safe, quick, and cost-effective use as alternative daily cover. One such device is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,304,014 (Slutz). Like the device disclosed in Lammers, the Slutz device consists of a framework for carrying a tarpaulin, to be moved by heavy equipment. It both deploys and takes up the tarpaulin using hydraulics. However, this device employs a complicated means for attaching and detaching the spindle about which is wrapped the tarpaulin, as well as means for raising and lowering an attached spindle with respect to the framework. As such, it represents a fairly complicated, expensive solution to the problem of deploying reusable, cost effective alternative daily cover.
The devices represented by the prior art fail to effectively deploy and take up cost effective alternative daily cover in a simplified, inexpensive, easy to use manner. The invention disclosed is an improvement over the prior art in that it allows for the use of inexpensive, reusable tarpaulins, it employs a simplified, inexpensive spindle and tarpaulin component to carry and deploy the alternative daily cover that can be used at small landfills with a minimum of labor, it employs weight-saving design features so that it can be used with smaller, less expensive machinery, and it is less likely to cause deploying devices to sink into and become mired in the waste materials which constitute a landfill than the heavier devices disclosed by the prior art.
It is an objective of this invention to provide a new and improved spindle and tarpaulin combination to be used with a device for deploying and taking up reusable alternative daily cover for use at landfills. Other objectives of this invention will be readily apparent from the description that follows.
In one aspect, the invention is directed to a component of a device used to deploy and take up a tarpaulin, to be used primarily in the field of waste management and specifically to assist in the use of a tarpaulin as a reusable, inexpensive alternative daily cover for landfills. The device comprises a spindle and a tarpaulin, wherein the tarpaulin is contained on and secured to the spindle. The device is intended to be used with a deployment device, which typically is lifted and positioned by the use of heavy equipment typically used at landfills, such as bulldozers, compactors, and excavators. The device employs weight-reducing design features which permit it to be used with smaller positioning equipment.
This aspect of the invention may include one or more of the following features: the spindle may be hollow for reduced weight and may have both interior and exterior reinforcing components for increased strength, and the tarpaulin may include a narrow tongue which serves as a connection point to the spindle, thereby allowing use of a tarpaulin having a width greater than the length of the spindle.
Other features and advantages of the invention are described below.